ATLANTA – Tuesday’s Chick-fil-A Bowl against Texas A&M isn’t just a mulligan for the Duke football team to try to make amends for its

Duke’s Justin Foxx is a step late in getting to Heisman Trophy winning quarterback Jameis Winston in the ACC Championship Game

ACC Championship Game loss to No. 1 Florida State. It’s also a second chance for the Blue Devils defense to get the better of a Heisman Trophy winner.

Things didn’t go well against this year’s winner on Dec. 7, as Jameis Winston recovered from a slow start to throw for 330 yards and three touchdowns in a 45-7 Seminoles’ victory in Charlotte. That’s why Kelby Brown and his teammates are so looking forward to the second chance they’re getting another chance against last year’s winner Johnny Manziel of the Aggies.

“When we found out about our matchup, we were real pumped about it,” All-ACC linebacker said. “It’s awesome playing against a guy who’s that exciting and an offense that’s that good. It’s a chance for us to make a statement about ourselves and our program. It’s just fun. It’s the nature of a competitor.”

Winston and Manziel are the 12th and 13th Heisman winners Duke has faced in its football history.

By playing them back-to-back, the Blue Devils (10-3) become only the second team in recent memory to face Heisman winners in consecutive games. LSU was the last to do it, against Alabama’s Mark Ingram and Auburn’s Cam Newton in 2010.

Although Winston and Manziel share the distinction of owning the most prestigious bronze statue on college football, their physical makeup and quarterbacking styles couldn’t be more different.

2012 Heisman Trophy winner Johnny Manziel

Winston is a physically imposing 6-foot-4, 228-pound marksman who, despite being mobile, prefers to throw from the pocket while Manziel is a 6-1, 200-pound sprite who is equally as dangerous throwing the ball as he is when he pulls it down and decides to run.

Those differences only complicate the challenge ahead for Duke’s defense.

“Manziel and Winston are obviously two great quarterbacks,” senior cornerback Ross Cockrell said. “Winston is a much bigger quarterback, not nearly as quick and as fast, but very mobile.

“The thing about Manziel that makes him tough is (that) when he’s back there scrambling around, you can’t really tell which routes the receivers are going to run. You have to cover for so long and your technique and your eyes are going to have to be perfect.”

The task at hand isn’t any easier for those chasing his around in the backfield.

“(The coaches are) always telling us on the D-line, collapse that pocket, make sure that he does not have a scramble lane, because we know that Johnny Manziel is a mobile quarterback and he likes to get out of the pocket, scramble, make plays, put on a show,” senior defensive end Kenny Anunike said. “So we just have to make sure that we get in there and get some power rushes, keep the upfield and just make sure he stays right there in that pocket.”

For his part, Manziel said he has a lot of respect for Duke. It’s an opinion, surprisingly enough, based largely on the way it played against Winston in Charlotte earlier this month.

Although the final result of that game wasn’t pretty, the Blue Devils did manage to contain Winston and powerful Seminoles until running out of gas in the second half. They were the first defense this season to shut FSU out through the first quarter, and only trailed 17-0 at halftime.

Anthony Boone has his work cut out for him against Texas A&M, just as he did against FSU

“I think the biggest thing about Duke is they have a lot of fire,” Manziel said at a press conference earlier this week. “They swarm to the ball and they play good as a unit.

“You look at what they did at the beginning of the Florida State game. They really slowed that high-powered offense down. I think they played hard more than anything and they played together as a unit.”

According to coach David Cutcliffe, it’s important for quarterback Anthony Boone and the Blue Devils’ offense to be equally as coordinated – something that wasn’t always the case against the Seminoles in its most recent outing.

Complicating matters are a season-ending injury to senior tackle Perry Simmons and the suspension of leading rusher Jela Duncan.

Duke quarterback Anthony Boone, the man under pressure to keep up with the last two Heisman Trophy winners, said the key to success is remember who he is – and isn’t – while paying as little attention to his counterpart on the other side of the field.

“Guys like that are going to put up numbers,” Boone said of Manziel and Winston. “To try to go out there and compete with them is where I’ll try to do too much and mistakes will happen.”